Showing titles in Children's Studies

In Pledged, Alexandra Robbins followed four college girls to produce a riveting narrative that read like fiction. Now, in The Overachievers, Robbins uses the same captivating style to explore how our high-stakes educational culture has spiraled out of control.

This national best-seller chronicles the true story of two brothers coming of age in the Henry Horner public housing complex in Chicago. Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers are 11 and nine years old when the story begins in the summer of 1987. Living with their mother and six siblings, they struggle against grinding poverty, gun violence, gang influences, overzealous police officers, and overburdened and neglectful bureaucracies. Immersed in their lives for two years, Kotlowitz brings us this classic rendering of growing up poor in America’s cities.

Our culture tells parents there's one best way to raise kids: enroll them in a dozen activities, protect them from trauma, and get them into the most expensive college you can. If you can't do that, don't bother. How is that going? Record rates of anxiety, depression, medication, debts, loneliness and more. In Family Unfriendly, bestselling author and Washington Examiner columnist Timothy P. Carney says it's time to end this failed experiment in overparenting.

A fascinating look at the evolution of behavioral science, the revolutionary way it's changing the way we live, and how nurturing environments can increase people's well-being in virtually every aspect of our society, from early childhood education to corporate practices. If you want to know how you can help create a better world, listen to this book.

Diane Ravitch, America's foremost historian of education, says that public education in the United States is one of the pillars of our democratic society. In this eloquent book, she explains that our public schools have been wrongly criticized for low achievement, when federal data show that test scores and graduation rates are at their highest point in history - for black students, Hispanic students, white students, and Asian students - and dropout rates are at their lowest point in history.

Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children. Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of "leisure" activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security.

Bestselling novelist Gay Courter recounts her experiences as a Guardian ad Litem, a volunteer court-appointed special advocate (CASA) for children involved in the legal system due to abuse, neglect, or abandonment. Her story is both heartbreaking and heartwarming, and is an inspiration for anyone who has ever looked up from a newspaper and wondered, "What can I do to help?"

One hundred and ten years ago, Maria Montessori, the first female physician in Italy, devised a very different method of educating children, based on her observations of how they naturally learn. In Montessori, Angeline Stoll Lillard shows that science has finally caught up with Maria Montessori. Lillard presents the research behind nine insights that are foundations of Montessori education, describing how each of these insights is applied in the Montessori classroom.

Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization by Margaret Mead is a pioneering work in cultural anthropology that examines the adolescence and cultural practices of Samoan youth. Originally published in 1928, Mead's study challenges Western assumptions about the universality of adolescent experiences and sheds light on the influence of cultural factors on human behavior. In this groundbreaking work, Mead explores Samoan society's impact on the emotional and psychological development of its youth, focusing on the transition from adolescence to adulthood.

This well-researched book identifies the wide-ranging harms resulting from mother- and father-loss, and it provides a roadmap for effective children’s rights advocacy. Whether you’re seeking to make sense of your own fractured childhood, or yearn to prevent similar struggles for the next generation, Them Before Us will equip you to be the adult who should have advocated for you as a child. By defending children’s rights, we protect the heart of every child and set a course that will decimate a myriad of the social ills currently plaguing our world.

In her new book, Cathy Glass, the number one best-selling author of Damaged, tells the story of the Alice, a young and vulnerable girl who is desperate to return home to her mother. Alice, aged four, is snatched by her mother the day she is due to arrive at Cathy's house. Drug-dependent and mentally ill, but desperate to keep hold of her daughter, Alice's mother snatches her from her parents' house and disappears.

Granted unprecedented access to the Los Angeles Juvenile Court, including the judges, the probation officers, and the children themselves, Edward Humes creates an unforgettable portrait of a chaotic system that is neither saving our children in danger nor protecting us from adolescent violence. Yet he shows us there is also hope in the handful of courageous individuals working tirelessly to triumph over seemingly insurmountable odds.

This riveting inside story of the intense search for the Salt Lake City teenager who was kidnapped from her bed reveals never-before-told details of the largest investigation in Utah state history. Paced like a thriller, this true account moves between the parallel stories of the searchers and the abductor. Going beyond a mere eyewitness account, the book includes information culled from interviews with more than 150 people involved in the search and investigation, notes from family meetings, and memos from law enforcement officials.

In Girls on the Edge, psychologist and physician Leonard Sax argues that many girls today have a brittle sense of self-they may look confident and strong on the outside, but they're fragile within. Sax offers the tools we need to help them become independent and confident women, and provides parents with practical tips on everything from helping their daughter limit her time on social media, to choosing a sport, to nurturing her spirit through female-centered activities.

Parents, educators, and the media wring their hands about the plight of America's children and teens - soaring rates of emotional problems, limited coping skills, disengagement from learning - and yet there are ways to reverse these disheartening trends. Teach Your Children Well acknowledges that every parent wants successful children. However, until we are clearer about our core values and the parenting choices that are most likely to lead to authentic, and not superficial, success, we will continue to raise exhausted, externally driven, impaired children.

Schools have long meant more than an education in America. Flawed, inequitable, underfunded, and segregated, they remain the most important engine of social mobility and the crucible of our democracy. The cost of closing them for so long during COVID, made with good intentions, has not been fully reckoned with. In The Stolen Year, Anya Kamenetz follows families across the country through the pandemic. She dives deep into the history that brought us to this point, making the case that 2020 wasn't a lost year—it was taken from our children by years of neglect and bad faith.

Heather Shumaker has sparked much discussion with her "renegade rules for raising competent and compassionate kids". In this follow-up book, she takes on new hot-button issues like banning homework, technology use, and skipping kindergarten. Shumaker offers broader guidance on how parents can control their own anger and move from an overscheduled life to one of more free play.

Cruel to Be Kind is the true story of Max, age six. He is fostered by Cathy while his mother is in hospital with complications from type 2 diabetes. Fostering Max gets off to a bad start when his mother, Caz, complains and threatens Cathy even before Max has moved in. Cathy and her family are shocked when they first meet Max. But his social worker isn't the only one in denial; his whole family are, too.

They are a mass migration of thousands, yet each one travels alone. Solito, Solita (Alone, Alone) is an urgent collection of oral histories that tells - in their own words - the story of young refugees fleeing countries in Central America and traveling for hundreds of miles to seek safety and protection in the United States. Fifteen narrators describe why they fled their homes, what happened on their dangerous journeys through Mexico, how they crossed the borders, and for some, their ongoing struggles to survive in the United States.

While counseling sex offenders, Anna Sonoda, LCSW learned firsthand that grooming, the prelude to child sexual abuse, is intentional, gradual, and observable. In Duck, Duck Groom, Anna Sonoda provides the straight talk parents need about how predators target families and what caring adults can do to interrupt grooming.